


a long December

by blackeyedblonde



Series: ✨Babies, Beasties, and Breeding Kink✨ [5]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Cabin Fic, Comfort Reading, Domestic Fluff, Family Fluff, Foxes, M/M, Nature Magic, Non-Graphic Smut, Shapeshifting, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:42:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21876820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackeyedblonde/pseuds/blackeyedblonde
Summary: If he’s meant to trust his gut, there’s no reason Sumo should’ve growled. The dog stands at his heels now, quiet but alert. Hank runs the tip of his tongue along his bottom lip, chapped as it already is in this weather, and tries not to sound too hopeful when he utters a name he hasn’t spoken in too many weeks to count.“Connor?”
Relationships: Hank Anderson/Connor
Series: ✨Babies, Beasties, and Breeding Kink✨ [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1516019
Comments: 23
Kudos: 203





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BriWei](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BriWei/gifts).



> Just a little touch of magic and cozy cuddles for Bri’s birthday. Thank you for being one of the most generous, golden-hearted, and loving people I have EVER known in any capacity. May 2020 be as good to you as you are to all of us, and even more 💗
> 
> This is just some low-stakes AU time with a sweet shapeshifter boy who loves his big huntsman husband! Do foxes purr? Probably not, but Connor is a special creature ;-)

  
  
Twilight is only just beginning to make the snow glitter like sapphire when Hank hears something outside.

Sumo raises his shaggy head and gazes in the direction of the door but doesn’t otherwise stir or growl like he would if there were a bear or wolf nearby. His nose twitches and his tail thumps once on his bedding, but then he settles back down and closes his eyes with a heavy sigh.

Probably just snow falling off the eaves or a deer foraging, Hank figures. He turns back to his mending and peers down through his glasses to push a thick needle through the heavy leather of his coat, pulling the jagged rip together stitch by stitch. It’s not the tidiest work in the world, but at least it’ll keep the cold from coming in through the split and hitting his side like a frozen blade.

He gets three more stitches in before something scratches at the door, and this time he sets his needle and thread aside when the hair on Sumo’s ruff prickles and the dog lets out a low growl. Hank has the shotgun propped by his bed in hand before he’s even drawn another breath, moving across the cabin floor in two long strides. He pulls back the curtain to peer into the surrounding wood and the span of his own front porch. There’s nothing big enough to spot at first glance, so he unbolts the door and greets the cold night with the barrel of his gun.

The eerie silence after fresh snowfall surrounds him on all sides. Hank’s breath fogs on the air as he steps down off the porch, eyes drawn swiftly to a small set of fresh prints leading from the edge of the clearing right to his front door.

If he’s meant to trust his gut, there’s no reason Sumo should’ve growled. The dog stands at his heels now, quiet but alert. Hank runs the tip of his tongue along his bottom lip, chapped as it already is in this weather, and tries not to sound too hopeful when he utters a name he hasn’t spoken in too many weeks to count.  
  
“Connor?”

His answer comes in a blur of orange and brown fur, the creature like a whip of something fiery streaking through the snow as it rounds the corner of the cabin. Sumo is off the porch in one giant leap and galloping out to meet the slender fox, the two of them colliding like old friends and tangling up to wrestle there in the powdery snow.

Hank lets out a relieved breath and lowers his gun, shutting the door behind him before easing down onto one of the wooden steps. He watches his dog and the fox play and chase each other through the yard for a spell, amused with how young Sumo looks when he romps around with an equal on four legs. But soon enough it’s getting too dark to see them from only a few yards away, and Hank whistles when he sees that the fox has his canine companion pinned, its rusty bottlebrush tail waving like a victory flag in the air.

“Sumo,” he calls, and the dog whines like he doesn’t outweigh his friend five or more times, waiting until the fox jumps off him before lumbering back up to the porch. The fox himself stands silhouetted there in the last feeble wink of light, grinning at Hank with a mouthful of pearly teeth for all he’s worth.

“Well,” Hank says, corner of his lips twitching up. “Aren’t you going to come up here and see me, too, or am I chopped liver tonight?”

The fox is in his lap in one long leap and a single bound, licking under Hank’s chin and winding around his legs as he happily growls. Its eyes shine like dark amber in the firelight seeping from the cabin windows, warm and familiar, and Hank huffs out a pleased sound despite himself.

“Been wondering when you’d come back around,” he says, warm fingers curling in its thick fur. “Sumo missed you.”

The fox laughs, an all too human sound, raspy and content. They both know it isn’t just Sumo who’d been missing somebody.

When Hank gathers the fox up into his arms and carries it through the front door, it doesn’t fight or struggle, perfectly pleased to leave the frozen wood behind in exchange for a warm place to bed down for the night.

Back inside, the fire crackles and Sumo has already gone to warm himself in his big bed by the potbelly stove. Hank sheds out of his boots and trousers and overshirt until he’s down to nothing but his long johns, drawing all the curtains and adding a log or two on the grate before putting water on to boil. The fox sprawls out on the floorboards not too far from Sumo, halfway under one of Hank’s two rickety chairs while he busies himself with grooming his cold paws.

There’s no need to talk, or put on airs, or bring out the whole fuckin’ tea and cookie spread for a guest, not that Hank’s ever bothered with keeping up with that kind of pomp anyway. He does get his jar of sourwood honey down to spread onto a biscuit with soft butter while he drinks his chamomile brew, though. The fox perks up and sits at his feet, eyes shining with gentle yearning until Hank breaks off a piece of bread and feeds it to the little beast.

“Worse than the damn dog,” he mumbles, shaking his head as he gives his guest another bite with extra honey. “Hits the spot, though, huh.”

After their evening snack, Hank washes up with some of the warm water on the stove and combs through his hair and brushes his teeth before climbing into bed. The fox jumps in after him, never needing to be asked twice, and waits until Hank’s made sure the shotgun is propped up within reach and settled in under his old quilts before curling up against his side. Hank reads by flickering candlelight until the wick starts to get long and smoke, and then he snuffs the flame out and hunkers down for the night, smoothing a broad hand along the fox’s sleek side until they both drift off to sleep.

Life had been simple and straightforward out here for a good few years, if only quiet and terribly, achingly lonely. Hank couldn’t have known how much better it would be once a little red fox came trotting along. 

  
  
  
  
  


When Hank next wakes it’s to the sound of something akin to gentle purring, a sweet rumble made low and deep in the chest. He feels like he’s butt up against a furnace, but it isn’t the fox tucked against his belly anymore—rather, six long feet of a sinewy-muscled and gorgeous naked man pressed along him from his chest to his knees.

“Mmm,” Hank hums, stretching with a pop in his back before reaching over to wrap an arm around Connor’s shoulders, pulling him closer so he can bury his nose in the sweet softness of his lover’s neck where the purring hums. “Y’know I’d still feed you with my fingers even when you look like this, right?”

“I’d rather keep surprising you,” Connor teases, the gentle hoarseness in his voice enough to make a chill crawl up Hank’s spine, but not from any cold. “There are too many watchful eyes in the woods. I only want you to ever see me…like this.”

There’s an implication there, quietly unspoken but still loud and clear. Hank slides a hand down Connor’s bare side, over the ridges of his rib cage and then to the delicate dip above his hipbone. He holds him there, feeling prideful and protective and a thousand other things that burn deep in his chest.

“You weren’t followed?” he asks, just to be sure.

Connor’s lips turn up in a sly little smile as he presses his soft mouth to Hank’s in the dark. “I never am.”

“Good,” Hank says, reaching up to cup a hand around Connor’s face. “Want you all for myself.”

The fire in the stove is only the glow of orange embers now, but they don’t want for anything more when Connor’s fine hands undo the buttons along Hank’s front, taking him out there under their pile of quilts. There’s only a brief fumble beneath the blankets, the sound of the old bed creaking in the dark, and then the sweetest sigh as Connor hitches both legs up around Hank’s waist and lets him sink in to the hilt.

Their lovemaking is always made sweeter by the fact that this is only the beginning of a long season spent together. Connor will weather the worst of the winter here, bringing the sound of laughter back to the cabin and keeping Hank company in the long evenings when it grows dark before he’s even sat down for his supper. If a fox walks beside him in the snow when he goes out to chop wood or make sure the well hasn’t frozen over, not too many pairs of eyes are any wiser.

There’s always a sour note to accompany the sweetness, though, and Hank knows Connor will leave again at the beginning of spring’s first thaw for—days, weeks, months, there’s never any surefire way to know. He supposes it’s all part of life’s most precious and unexpected blessings; good fortune always finds you when you least expect it.

For now, Hank only tangles his fingers up in the soft curls at the crown of Connor’s head and revels in the beauty of taking his time. He drinks down Connor’s kisses like honeyed whiskey and lets himself be urged along by the blunt nails pressing into his back, the hushed words planted like secrets along his jaw.

“I missed you more than you missed me,” Connor says, spun glass words landing at the corner of Hank’s mouth alongside a crooked kiss. He cries out, a sound muffled only by the firm press of Hank’s lips, and for a moment it feels like trying to hold something wild.

“I doubt that,” Hank tells him, still carrying them both along in some gentle tide of his rolling hips, all the surrounding world padded with fresh snow and promise at the start of their long December.  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I come bearing a humble addition to this little verse, per request! Yes, there are babies. FOX BABIES.
> 
> Pure comfort reading, soft lite drama, even softer non-graphic smut. All implied shapeshifter pregnancy and baby-having happens off screen in this magical realm of magical occurrences, so you don't need to worry about that lol. I'm not sure if this is modern day or historical but it's fantasy either way, so let Hank make his sourdough bread and live his domestic woodland life. He's doing amazing. 
> 
> I know times are tough, so I hope a few of you get some enjoyment out of this 💖🦊🦊🦊 Thank you!

  
  
Spring’s equinox falls somewhere in the last leg of March’s crisp sprawl. The forest surrounding the cabin is still barren from months of hard freeze but most of the snow has melted away and tiny, hard buds of green are beginning to burrow their way out of dormant trees. Winter still hangs on by a thread, thin and gossamer like spider silk, but spring will arrive with a swiftness now that the planet has shaken off its shroud and turned itself toward the sun.

It’s also the last day, Hank knows, that he’ll see Connor for quite some time. 

He tries not to think much about it as he steps into his boots and trudges out into the weak tea light of dawn that morning. Two sets of paws romp along ahead of him, a big dog and a slender fox, playfully bounding after each other on their way to the wood pile. The box by the hearth is woefully empty and there’s still coffee and porridge that needs to be made, so Hank loads up the sling thrown across Sumo’s back and then bundles a stack of kindling up into his own arms before heading back toward the cabin. 

“What sounds good for breakfast?” he asks the fox, glancing down at the rust-colored companion trotting along beside him. The forest is quiet around them save for Sumo’s panting and the distant call of an owl as it begins to turn in for bed, but if the fox had any particular answer in mind, he keeps it to himself for now. 

Hank sighs out a cloud of warm breath as he stomps up the cabin steps. The sun is beginning to rise through the spindly trees, shining like a candle through spread fingers. He stands there with his armload of wood and wishes, for a moment, that the day could stop here. Freeze in this singular point between winter and spring and stay that way, if only for a little while longer.

He nudges the door open with his boot, letting the dog and fox slip inside before stepping out of his shoes and following them. When the door shuts behind him, Hank looks up to find his fox-eyed companion standing behind him with two very human and naked arms outstretched, waiting to take some of the load. 

“Porridge is fine,” Connor says promptly, answering Hank’s question as if he’d plucked the thought straight from his mind. He leans in and kisses some of the cold off Hank’s face, lips warm and softer than they have any right to be. “We can slice up the last of the dried persimmon, too.”

Connor goes to quickly dress and stoke the fire in the stove as Hank pops open his jar of the little dried fruits, tipping the last two pieces into his palm. He lays them out on the butcher block and dices them with steady movements of a clean knife, thinking back to the previous autumn when he’d picked them from a tree. Had things been different, then? It can be hard to track his time in the woods and the seasons when Connor weaves in and out of Hank’s days and slips between forms like a curl of smoke. 

Sometimes Hank can’t quite recall if he knew the fox, first, or the man.

Connor hasn’t mentioned how long he may be gone, this time. But the certainty of his departure hangs in the eaves of the cabin with the cobwebs that have gathered all through winter. When Connor leaves, Hank will get out his stepladder and broom and knock the dust and webs away in honor of spring’s arrival. 

What is a ritualistic cleansing for many is sometimes an act Hank spends in quiet mourning, where it’s hard to measure what he misses the most when it’s just him and Sumo in the cabin. Warmth? Laughter? Companionship? Connor is so much more than a warm body in his bed, but Hank feels the loss the most at night and in early mornings when he reaches beneath the quilt for someone who isn’t there.

He never mentions it aloud. Would die, maybe, before he ever tried to lay claim on something wild and so vibrantly alive. Especially Connor.

And yet they sit at the small table together and eat their porridge and persimmon by light of the old kerosene lamp, sipping hot coffee with their knees brushing from time to time in the close quarters. Connor hadn’t shrugged into much more than a pair of Hank’s old trousers and a threadbare shirt with sleeves he has to keep pulling up over his forearms. The clothes are far too big but he still wears them well, somehow. Hank’s distracted gaze lingers on the delicate dip between Connor’s collarbones while he absently pokes at his last few bites of breakfast. 

“What if you stayed?” he asks, abruptly enough that it makes Connor’s hands jerk and rattle his spoon. “Through spring. And summer.” 

_ Forever _ , Hank doesn’t say. 

Connor looks away, out the window, at something Hank can’t see. His throat works in place, restless fingertips tapping on the lip of his tin coffee cup. “I can’t,” he says simply. 

“Where do you go?” Hank asks, forcing the question from where it’s been lodged in the back of his throat for weeks, months, the past two years. “What do you do?” 

He’s not expecting the flush that spreads from Connor’s cheeks down to his chest, stark and pink against the white cotton unbuttoned there. The chair creaks beneath Connor’s weight as he shifts, eyes darting around in the trees outside for an answer Hank doesn’t expect to understand. 

“I do what has to be done,” he says, gently hoarse, and then lets silence fall again between them. “What nature calls me to do.”

“You can’t do that here?” Hank asks, not even pausing a moment to think about what that really  _ means _ , feeling a mixture of terribly human things burn in his chest. Hopefulness, for one, and then the aching burn of rejection when Connor sadly shakes his head.

“I don’t know,” Connor says, looking down at their hands on the table. His own, fine-boned, smooth and pale after the long winter. Hank’s, wide and shovel-palmed and scarred, with knuckles slowly beginning to give in to arthritic stiffness. “I haven’t ever tried.” 

Hank’s chair scuffs against the floorboards as he pushes away from the table and slowly stands. He takes his bowl and Connor’s, stacking them together before looping two fingers through their mugs with just a few swigs of lukewarm coffee sloshing at the bottom. “Forget I asked,” he murmurs as he turns and walks away toward the washbasin. “You go do what you have to do, Con. You know where to find me when you’re done.”

With the dishes set aside for now, Hank picks up his seldom-used pouch of tobacco and walks out onto the porch with a match clamped between his teeth. He leaves the door open behind him and stands looking toward the east where the sun is still climbing in the sky, finger messily packing a pinch of tobacco into his pipe before lighting up. 

The smoke burns in his lungs but it’s easier to swallow than the phantom ache of something else hanging like dead weight in his chest. Sumo lays behind him with his big head resting on his paws, but looks up when tiny claws click on the wood and a trim fox hops down the steps and darts across the lawn still stiff with frost. 

“Stay,” Hank commands around the stem of his pipe when Sumo rouses and whines, still watching the creature at the edge of the forest. The fox turns and looks straight at him, eyes boldly intelligent, and waits. 

They watch each other for a time, and then Hank feels himself break and relent. 

“Go,” he says, just loud enough for the fox to hear him. “I’ll be alright. Go.”

A light breeze moves though the fox’s fur, making its nose twitch in the cold. It blinks honey golden eyes and then turns, slipping off between the trees like it’d never been there at all.

Hank finishes smoking his pipe and then, sighing heavily, goes into the cabin to get a pencil and paper. There’s an entire planting and gathering season ahead that he intends to put toward good use, and when he sits in the chair Connor’s warm body was in just a few minutes before, he’s dismayed to feel that the wood has already grown cold.

His borrowed shirt and trousers are neatly folded on the foot of the bed. Hank looks away from them and, tightening his grip around the pencil, tries to quell the shaking in his hands as he begins to write.  
  
  


* * *  
  
  


Hank spends most of the first week in his garden plot, tirelessly digging into the earth and tilling up fresh soil with nothing more than his strength and a well-loved spade. He builds a trellis for the peas and cucumber vines, wraps stakes with wire for his tomato plants and mends the sagging fence to keep wild rabbits and deer out. It’s hard work, but the weather is good and he wears long sleeves and a hat to keep the sun off his face and neck. Sumo keeps watch from the shade under the porch awning, getting up from time to time to come snuffle around the garden rows and wag his tail.

After the fifth day of work—when the fence is patched and he’s strung a woven net over wooden poles to keep the hawks out—, Hank lets the hens into the new garden plot and watches while they scratch up the worst of the bugs and vermin. On the sixth day, he plants his seeds of the season, gently folding them into the loose soil with nothing but his hands. On the seventh, he sleeps until mid-morning and has his coffee with a book on the porch until the sun is beginning to nod off toward the western horizon and cast long shadows between the trees. 

When he isn’t exhausted and worn weary enough by the sun to wash up and fall into bed shortly after nightfall, the evening suddenly seems far too long and empty again. Hank invests time in doing some of the things he’d been accidentally neglecting throughout the winter months, darning three pairs of holey socks with his crude stitching and then cleaning out the flour and potato bins. He covers bread dough with a towel and leaves it to rise overnight, and then sits by the fire and whittles until he can’t keep his eyes open anymore. The piece of basswood in his hand seems to take shape on its own under the knife while Hank’s mind wanders elsewhere, and it isn’t until he starts carving out a pair of pointed ears that he purposefully sets the figure aside and heads for bed. 

It’s dark in the cabin, everything bathed in shadow except for the dying embers in the hearth. Sumo sleeps heavily in his bed on the other side of the large room, snoring long and deep. It’s not frigid enough anymore for extra blankets, but Hank pulls the quilt up to the middle of his chest anyway to try and ward off some of the cold in his bed. He closes his eyes, only for a moment, and feels himself sinking lower into the stuffed mattress where the depth of an old man’s tiredness begins swallowing him whole. 

Hank drifts somewhere far away, and then there’s the soft thump of careful knuckles on the door. 

He has a hand on his gun in less than two seconds, feet touching the floor before the third knock has even landed. Sumo sits alert but doesn’t growl, eyes shining some in the moonlight when Hank parts the curtains to look out onto the porch. He doesn’t see anyone, but still cocks the gun before pulling back the deadbolt and opening the door. 

“Who’s there?” he asks, eyes doing a wide sweep from one side of the porch to the other before he takes a step out on bare feet. “Step lightly or I’ll start fucking blasting anything that moves.” 

There’s a rustle in the budding rosebush at the base of the steps, and when Hank points his attention and the barrel of his gun downwards he watches a familiar shape slowly slink out into view. 

The fox pins its ears back against its head, tail lowered as it crouches down and climbs up onto the porch. It chirps there at Hank’s feet, then presses itself flat to the wood and sweeps its bottlebrush tail across the planking. When Hank doesn’t move at first, it inches closer and wetly noses into the arch of his foot. 

Hank sighs, loosening the grip on his shotgun. Some of the coiled tension bleeds free from his body and he sags there where he stands, suddenly exhausted. 

“C’mon now, you don’t have to do all that,” he murmurs, going down on one creaking knee to press a hand to the top of the fox’s head. “You’re not hurt, are you? Connor.” 

Connor doesn’t answer, of course, but the fox goes up on its hind feet, front paws pressing into the front of Hank’s thighs as it licks under his chin. It leans in, almost like it’s trying to impart some kind of embrace, close enough that Hank can smell the forest and the earth and the wind in the creature’s thick coat. 

He has a hundred and one questions weighing on the tip of his tongue, but it’s easier still to just stand and tiredly say, “Come inside, kid. I’m freezing my ass off out here.” 

Sumo greets their guest like he always does, happy and grinning, fluffy tail thumping the back of Hank’s chair by the hearth. It’s dark in the cabin and Hank goes to light the oil lamp again, and when he turns around Connor is standing there without a stitch of clothing on him.

“Jesus,” Hank murmurs, but otherwise picks up his old flannel robe off a hook and passes it over. They watch each other while Connor shrugs into the garment, the silence lingering long and tilted strangely on one side. A piece of charred wood in the fire grate cracks and pops while the embers glow beneath it, and Connor doesn’t do up the sash on the robe, simply stands there holding it together between fingers so pale they almost look blue in the moonlight. 

“Well,” Hank says, reaching up to scratch through his beard. His heart is still coming down from the jolt it took when he flew out of bed, beating hard and fast now for another reason. “You came back.” 

Connor looks as guilty as he is beautiful, dark curls falling against his forehead. Hank tries to remember how he got lucky enough to have somebody so gorgeous orbit his small, humble life like some shimmering star. Sometimes none of it seems real.

He wonders, for a troubling moment, if this is all a dream.

“I can’t stay away from you,” Connor says, almost a whisper. “I tried, but—I can’t. I don’t want to.” 

“Did you do what you had to get done?” Hank chokes out, feeling foolish for it even as the words leave his mouth. He doesn’t know why he asks. It’s not as if somebody like Connor needs to file his tax papers or put new shingles on the roof after a rough winter.

“No,” Connor says right away, eyes swerving to meet Hank’s so swiftly that the contact feels like an electric current pulsing between them. He takes a step forward, one hand still clutching the robe together, the other hovering, outstretched, like he’s waiting to touch Hank but needs permission now that he’s on two feet instead of four. 

“I realized I could have everything I wanted right here,” Connor says, biting into his bottom lip with a pleading, hungry look in his eyes that somehow burns Hank up from the inside out. “With you.” 

“You can?” Hank asks, and then lets out a slow, shaky breath. It wouldn’t be wise to press his own luck, but the conviction on Connor’s face is so real and true it scares him a little bit. “You can,” he repeats softly, but it means something different this time. They both know that.

And then Connor is closing the last few inches between them, pressing the palm of his hand over Hank’s chest with five fingers spread wide as if to anchor himself there. Connor leans in close enough for Hank to feel his warm breath ghost across his chin, and then he tips his face up, watching Hank from beneath dark lashes that glow amber when they catch the lamplight. 

“You’re a good man, Hank,” Connor whispers, and when he says it like that maybe it’s something Hank can believe in. But then the next few words are spoken there against his lips, and Connor’s pressing their bodies together, reaching up to gently tangle his fingers in the silver waves loose at the nape of Hank’s neck as the robe falls open. “I want to belong to you.” 

Hank holds Connor’s face between his hands, knowing it’s real, and laughs softly there against his mouth in relief. “You don’t belong to anybody,” he says. Hank knows he means it deep down in his old heart even if the rest of him feels like he’s melting through the floor. “But me, hell—I’m free for the taking.” 

Connor kisses him, long and hard and deep, and suddenly they’re moving across the creaking floor to the bed, still warm beneath the quilt from Hank’s body heat. Connor’s hands claw the fabric at the small of Hank’s back and yank it upward as he licks into the seam of his mouth, nearly rending his clothes clean off him. Hank falls back into the blankets and draws Connor in with him, two bodies falling into this stationary vessel that’ll deliver them into something Hank can’t fathom just yet. 

Time seems to move with gauzy, dreamlike slowness, all the world gone pliant and as undefined as cotton clouds at the edges. Only Connor remains in focus, looming there above Hank with his naked body bathed in what pale celestial light comes through the cabin window. The old robe hangs off him like some altar gown, sloping off both strong shoulders, and here is Hank, knelt below the forest’s brightest deity and more than ready to give himself over in selfless offering. 

He strokes himself once, twice, and then momentarily loses the ability to think as Connor rises up and then takes all of his hardness at once, and Hank’s so deep inside him that he thinks he might be buried in the well of Connor’s belly. 

“Hank,” Connor rasps, voice full of something that makes the hair on Hank’s arms stand on end. He reaches down and Hank takes both of his hands and brings them to his lips, whispering a secret into one of Connor’s closed fists like a prayer box.

The world is quiet except for their quick breathing, the groaning mattress springs, the cicadas buzzing high in the trees outside. Connor works himself toward his ending there in Hank’s lap and then bows over into his arms, letting Hank pull him close again and lay him down in the warm bed. 

Connor comes with a gasp in the crook between Hank’s neck and shoulder, heels dug down into the divots above his ass, clutching Hank there to his chest and not letting go. His hips hold Hank in an open cradle, letting him rock there toward his own broken ending, the two of them finding some forgotten wholeness along the way to falling apart. 

Afterward, when Connor is petting the hair out of Hank’s eyes and kissing his brow even as they still lie together, he’ll open his fist and let the secret out into the air between them again. It shimmers in the dark like a firefly, a tiny speck of something bright and blue until Connor takes it again and hides it from view, keeping it safe.

“Stay,” Hank whispers against Connor’s temple. It’s easier to say in the dead of night, when the rest of the world isn’t listening. “Please.” 

Connor nods, fingers still tracing phantom runes up the column of Hank’s spine. Strength, wisdom, protection. Love. 

“I’ll be wherever you are,” he says. 

That is their promise.   
  
  


* * *  
  
  


Spring blooms in full, lazily lingers with its cool breezes and rainy mornings, and then fades into the lush and overgrown wildness of summer. The smell of hot ozone and honeysuckle mingles in the air like potpourri, making everything drunk with drowsy exhaustion by mid-afternoon. Hank and Connor spend the earliest part of their days working in the garden and then retreat indoors or to the riverside when the weather calls for it, Hank toting along his tackle box and fishing pole with hopes of catching dinner. 

There’s something of a gradual change in Connor that manifests in the smallest ways. When he gets overheated Hank will find a tired fox sprawled out under the shaded rose bushes, ears twitching to ward off the flies. They clip Sumo down to help him in the summer warmth but Connor doesn’t play and romp with the dog as much as he used to, even on cooler nights when the lightning bugs come out and light up the forest like stars. 

But he eats heartily, handsome as ever, happy to curl up at Hank’s side when they retire to bed at night. If he packs on a little extra softness with all the fresh-made bread and wild strawberry rhubarb pies, well—Hank’s never been one to talk.

Connor wanders off in the early morning one day, flitting across the yard on four paws and slipping into the woods before Hank even rouses in bed. When he stays gone all morning and for a good part of the afternoon, Hank goes out with Sumo and his heavy walking stick and doesn’t call Connor’s name, though he keeps his eyes carefully peeled as they forage. He collects a sack full of blackberries and picks a handful of ripened mushrooms for supper but finds no sign of a fox or man anywhere in the woods.

Hank tries not to worry but knows it’s futile the moment he tells himself to stop pacing a groove in the porch. He carries out the rest of the daily chores with a deep crease drawn between his eyes, hanging the linens out on the line and throwing feed for the hens as the sun begins to dip low in the sky. Sometimes Connor roams further out to hunt and bring back a rabbit for their supper, but he doesn't usually stay gone this long.

It’s easy, in Hank’s mind, to ponder every small thing he’s done wrong these past few months. Every little screw-up or misstep that might’ve driven Connor away for good comes to his mind, and he knows he’s being goddamned unreasonable but sometimes a man gets that way, once he starts getting on in years and has too much room to think. Hank’s seen better folks than him lose sight of themselves when they were left alone fo too long. 

And that’s part of the reason, he knows, that he moved out here in the first place. 

Hank milks the goats and locks the hens up in the coop in the final hour before night begins to fall. Milking is usually Connor’s job now that he’s settled in, and the youngest nanny cops an attitude and kicks the bucket over so warm milk spills out onto Hank’s boots. He swears a vivid blue streak but turns her loose in the pen, stomping back up to the cabin with his hackles raised. Stands there on the porch and thinks about hollering Connor’s name for half a minute before he cups his hands around his mouth and listens to his own voice echo through the forest, harsh and only slightly panicked at the edges.

All goes quiet, even the birds and the bugs. Nobody answers.

For supper Hank sautees his mushrooms in a little butter with fresh garlic from the garden and eats them right out of the skillet with a fork, though they don’t taste half as good as they usually do with nobody there to share them. He leaves the uneaten food to go cold and walks back outside, settling down on the porch steps with his pipe and pouch of tobacco for lack of anything else to do. 

It’ll be dark, soon. Twilight is singing her last golden note before dusk and the sun is winking out beneath the horizon. Hank’s only just finished packing his pipe when he sees something move at the tree line, and when he looks up there’s a familiar set of amber eyes gazing back at him. 

From a distance, it looks like Connor’s caught another wild marsh rabbit. Something brown and tawny hangs there in the fox’s jaws, but the way he moves and carries it with deliberate carefulness seems to tell a different story. Hank sets his pipe to the side and watches, in awe, as the fox he belongs to walks up to him and gently lays down a newborn kit into the open spread of his waiting hands. 

Hank looks at the fox and then down at the baby again, still new enough that its eyes aren’t yet open. He doesn’t know what to say. Only the cicadas talk amongst themselves overhead in a tireless symphony. But the little kit squirms, and Connor comes over to rest his handsome head there in the crook of Hank’s elbow.

“Is it yours?” he asks. The fox blinks at him, golden eyes clear and wise.  _ Yes. _ It’s harder for Hank to choke out the next few words. “Is it...mine?” 

Connor licks Hank’s wrist with his soft pink tongue, then grooms the kit’s tiny head. He sits back on his haunches there by Hank’s knee, looking awfully proud of himself.  _ Of course. _

“Are there more?” Hank rasps, bringing the baby up to his face so he can get a better look, nosing into the sweet, soft smell of something so new. It squeaks but then settles in Hank’s hands, the faintest but sweetest sound. He feels faint, just a little, but he wouldn’t drop this small gift for the whole world. 

The fox takes its paw and marks three rough lines in the dirt. It comes forward again and gently dips its head to take the baby by the scruff of the neck, seemingly intent on going back to the forest before nightfall. Hank runs his palm along the sleek fur on Connor’s side and nods, trying to understand. Making himself remember that Connor was something wild and strange before he was ever here. 

He wants to weep, but doesn’t. For the beauty and the simplicity and the sorrow.

“You’ll bring them back when they’re older, right?” Hank asks, voice rough. His head is swimming in possibilities he doesn’t know how to pin down, and for that reason there’s nothing left to do but give it all up for the taking. They can exist how they do, out here, away from the world. They’ve done it for years. They can keep on doing it, together.

The fox dips its head one last time, and Hank figures that’s his answer. 

“I’ll be here, honey,” he says, rubbing around both dark ears before the fox trots away and disappears into the thicket. “Be careful.”

Hank settles back down, picks up his pipe. Takes a deep, steadying breath and wipes at the corner of his eye. He strikes a match on the bottom of his boot and blows up a blue curl of smoke just as the first few stars begin to shine.   
  
  


* * *  
  
  


Connor returns at least once a day as the weeks go by, lounging nearby to simply rest or eat scraps of biscuit and roasted chicken from Hank’s hands. The man becomes scarce in lieu of the fox, but that suits Hank well enough all the same. He misses being able to kiss Connor’s neck and touch his soft curls, but it is what it is. He still talks, filling in his companion on the autumn planting in the garden, of the pumpkins and squash they’ll have to harvest. The fox listens while Hank strokes his fur, knowing there’s honeycomb to jar and preserves and pickled vegetables to set aside before winter. 

It’s not as lonely as Hank might’ve thought. But he thinks of that baby he held in his hands, tiny and real, and wonders what comes next. The answer arrive in the form of three tiny bundles of russet fur that bound out of the forest and then crouch down together to peek at him from behind Connor. 

Hank’s heart thuds in his chest as he puts Sumo in the house and shuts the door. He doesn’t know what he should do, so he goes out into the grass and sits down there in the clearing beneath an old oak tree. The three kits watch him, wary but inquisitive. He wonders if they know, somehow, that they partway belong to him. 

Connor leads all three over and Hank’s lungs squeeze in his chest when he sees their pale blue eyes, strange and unfamiliar in any other fox’s face. Once Connor lays down there at Hank’s side, they’re all over him in an instant—romping and wrestling and climbing into his lap with little chirps and tiny barks. 

“Hey, easy now,” Hank says, laughing for what feels like the first time in ages. Tiny needle teeth gnaw on his fingers and the cuff on his pants, pulling the laces on his shoes like a toddler would. Connor grins impishly with a mouth full of teeth himself, but gets up and walks around the tree, and when he steps back out he’s folding in on two legs to lean into Hank’s side. 

“Thank Christ there’s nobody else out here to see you,” Hank murmurs, shrugging out of his flannel and reaching over to drape it over Connor for some modesty’s sake. He noses into the familiar softness of Connor’s dark hair anyway, and then tips his chin up for a kiss.

“Missed you,” Connor says, tenderly running the pad of his thumb under Hank’s eye. It suddenly seems surreal, with him here like this, to have three young foxes rolling around in front of them and chasing yellow butterflies in the wild grass. 

All Hank can do is watch the kits and smile. There’s so much to learn and figure out—their names, their faces, and every other little thing.

“Are they like you?” he asks, because that seems like the easiest place to start. 

“Yes,” Connor answers, which makes Hank’s heart skip a painful, brief beat. Connor touches his arm, gentle and reassuring when he says, “They’ll show us who they are soon enough.” 

Hank nods mutely, holding out his hands for the closest of the three. The kit looks up at him, blinks, and smiles. It’s a human expression on a creature’s face if Hank ever saw it, but he’s not afraid. Far from it. 

“Come see your Papa,” he says, not expecting all three babies to jump into his lap at once. He barks out another laugh and holds them close, marveling some at their tiny heartbeats fluttering against his palm through soft fur. He belongs to them already.  


There’s the long summer unfolding ahead, almost endless in this singular moment. The magic of it thrums in the ground like a hidden pulse and Hank knows that he has the time, and the place, to figure all this out. 

With Connor here at his side, it’s a pretty good place to start.  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Love you, Bri! 


End file.
